During of 2007-2008 school year the Chicago Public Schools opened up the CPS OnDemand video servers from the whole district. CPS OnDemand is an online educational video service, that allows you to view and project thousands of videos to you class. In the past individual schools had to purchase and maintain their own On Demand servers. These servers were sold by a company called Safari Montage. Safari Montage holds the digital rights to dozens of video production companies including Schlessinger Media, National Geographic, Disney Educational Productions, A&E and BBC Active. These are some of the best producers of educational media in the business and all of this is for you free of charge.

How to Use

In order to access this content you need to go to the CPS OnDemand website: cpsondemand.cps.k12.il.us
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In the school drop down box choose Grant Campus. Then input the same Username and Password that you use for all other CPS logins.

Note:

Use Internet Explorer instead of Firefox or other web browsers when accessing the CPS OnDemand site. It appears to be less buggy.
The main page or dashboard of CPS OnDemand looks like this:
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The page is split up into three sections.
At the top is a menu bar which will take you to different sections of the site. On the left is the video player and to the right is your Active Playlist containing the most recently viewed videos.

Menu Bar

The CPS OnDemand menu bar has 8 different choices for you they are:
Dashboard: This brings you back to the main page.
Search: This allows you to search for videos by numerous different kinds of keywords. There is also a search box just above the menu bar for quick searches
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Subjects: Allows you to break down your search by class subjectsubject.jpg
Standards: Allows you to search and read the Illinois State Teaching Standards for each subject. All of the state standards are lined out for each program.
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Playlists: Here you can create and save playlists of all the videos you use. You can also copy, share or export these playlists to others even at other schools.
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Add-Ons: There are no add-ons at the moment so this page is empty.

Help: A resource where you can search and find answers to your questions.

Now Playing Screen

After choosing a video to watch you are taken to the Now Playing Screen. Here you are presented with a series of options to help you use and integrate the video into your class
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On the left of this screen is the video player. On the right is information on the video you are playing.

Under the video player is a link that lets you play the video full screen for use in the classroom. Under that is a bookmarker that lets you choose segments of a video for playback instead of playing the whole thing. Below that is a a series of links one for the State standards; another for an already prepared Quiz; and one more for a teachers guide.

Note: not all videos have a quiz or teachers guide prepared. Most should have the standards though.

On the right side the video is broken down into chapters. The amount of chapters varies from video to video. You can load up a chapter and then break it down to moments you want to show using the bookmarker then save these segments to your playlist for future playback. At the bottom of the chapter list there are links to purchase the title for your own personal library. Not all videos will have this option.

You can play a video by clicking on the green play icon anywhere on the page or in your playlist. The videos are either in Windows Media format or Quicktime format. All CPS computers should play these videos.

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